Update 7:45 PM 4 June 2013: 8:30 AM Wednesday 5 June 2013.
Rumor has it that the Lowndes County Commission has already had one budget
meeting and is going to have a meeting tomorrow about the
GA Supreme Court LOST decision.
Yet there’s nothing on
the Commission’s public calendar
and under Special Events
their website says
There are no events at this time
How is meeting where the people don’t know doing
people’s business?
-jsq
Cancelling a nuke is what’s really in the best interests of utility customers:
Southern Company and Georgia Power take note.
MidAmerican Energy just added another to the long list of nukes
permanently closed or
not to be built.
Time to add Plant Vogtle to that list.
In the DesMoinesRegister.com yesterday,
MidAmerican decides against Iowa nuclear plant:
MidAmerican Energy says design plan isn’t approved; environmentalists celebrate
MidAmerican Energy has scrapped plans for Iowa’s second nuclear
plant and will refund $8.8 million ratepayers paid for a
now-finished feasibility study, utility officials said Monday.The utility has decided against building any major power plant.
That’s because there is no approved design for the modular nuclear
plant it envisioned, and there are too many questions about limits
on carbon emissions from a natural gas plant, the company said.“We opted for what was in the best interest of our
customers,” MidAmerican vice president for regulatory affairs
Dean Crist told The Des Moines Register.The decision ends, Continue reading
The facts don’t match County Chairman Bill Slaughter’s assertion
(according to the VDT Thursday):
That decision was made in a good-faith effort to find the lowest
possible rate for garbage service for the citizens of Lowndes County,
he said Tuesday.
Commissioner Richard Raines moved and
the Commission voted to approve 9 October 2012
Proposal D and awarded it to the lowest bidder for that specific proposal, which was Veolia.
But that wasn’t the lowest-priced proposal,
according to the sheet of choices they were using in that meeting:
SO CEO Tom Fanning used Julia O’Neal’s question about cost overruns
to tout the alleged benefits of Kemper Coal,
which include selling CO2 to oil companies to pump into the ground to
produce more oil.
He didn’t mention that oil is then burned to produce more CO2.
And that Mississippi lignite coal he said would otherwise stay in the ground?
Yes it and its CO2 would stay there if SO would get on with solar instead of coal.
Before her question, he had not said much about that project, mostly this about Major Projects, at
29 minutes and 28 seconds in
SO’s own video
of
the 22 May 2013 Southern Company Stockholder meeting.
You’ll have to skip there manually, because of the SO’s video format.
SO prohibited “unauthorized” videoing,
so we don’t have the usual LAKE video on YouTube.
I always call out Vogtle and Kemper County.
Both projects are going to serve our customers for decades to come.
We’ve had some challenges with Kemper.
We’ll probably talk about those later.
But when I think about the value that these projects will bring,
I think our customers, and the economy of the southeast,
will be benefited for decades.
And we’re very excited about the progress we’re making on both of those.
It’s curious he mentioned SO’s flagship coal and nuclear projects
without saying coal or nuclear.
And if by “progress” he means Continue reading
Former Chairman Ashley Paulk may say he didn’t tell Cory Scarborough
of Deep South Sanitation that
any contract by the county for curbside pickup would be non-exclusive
(VDT 30 May 2013),
but David Rodock reported for the VDT from Ashley Paulk’s guest house
at a Lowndes County Commission retreat chaired by Ashley Paulk that:
Commissioners decided that getting out of the “trash
business” was best and that a non-exclusive agreement with
current curbside pickup companies (which about 12,000 citizens
already employ) would provide service without putting any people out
of business.
The VDT reported
(
Commission tackles key issues:
Waste management, tax lighting districts and SPLOST discussed at retreat
by David Rodock, 31 March 2012)
Commissioners “decided”.
Yet there is no vote recorded, in contravention to Georgia open meetings law
and a recent
Georgia Supreme Court decision.
How is this doing
“the people’s business”?
Maybe if they took a vote and recorded it properly we’d all know what they said.
-jsq
Counter to state law,
Lowndes County did not hold public hearings within 45 days before
the decision to close the waste collection centers.
ยง 12-8-24.2. Public hearing prior to entering contract regarding landfill
The governing authority of any county or municipal corporation and
the directors or managers of any local authority or special district
shall hold a public hearing before entering into a contract for the
sale, lease, or management of a landfill or solid waste disposal
facility owned by such county, municipal corporation, local
authority, or special district. The party responsible for holding
such a public hearing shall cause notice of the hearing to be posted
at the site of the landfill or facility and to run in a newspaper of
general circulation serving the county, municipal corporation, local
authority, or special district not less than 30 nor more than 45
days prior to the date of the hearing.
Can anyone argue that
“or solid waste disposal facility owned by such county”
does not include Lowndes County’s former solid waste collection centers? Continue reading
I’ve thanked Bubba McDonald for
being serious about solar.
However, 500 MW by Georgia Power in several years is nowhere
near enough, when
New Jersey has 1,000 MW already installed.
What we need in south Georgia is distributed solar power
for local jobs and direct reduction of electricity bills.
Making
a solar monopoly as in HB 657 wouldn’t solve that problem;
it would actually hinder
a real distributed solution.
Instead we need to reform that antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act
to enable financing for distributed solar.
Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC yesterday,
GOP revolutionaries push Georgia Power to embrace solar energy,
Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr. has spent more than four
decades in and around the state Capitol. That fact alone should
automatically disqualify him as a rabid revolutionary.And yet here he is, attempting to force real, radical change upon
one of this state’s most staid and revered institutions. McDonald is
the leader of a new and very Republican effort to require that
Georgia Power give solar energy a chance.
Nothing gets the attention of the incumbent duopoly of telcos and cablecos
like an upstart doing it 10 times faster for a lower price,
and claiming that can be profitable.
Dan Graziano wrote for BGR yesterday,
Google expects Fiber to be profitable, hints at new markets,
Google Fiber is seen by many as a regional experiment that will push
current Internet service providers to offer faster speeds at more
affordable speeds. Google Fiber head Milo Medin countered that
perception at an event on Wednesday, however. Speaking at a
Fiber-to-the-Home Council meeting, the executive explained that the
company’s fiber-optic broadband network isn’t just an expensive
research project but a great and profitable business for Google,
CNET reported.Medin noted that Google has kept costs down by partnering with
cities that are interested in bringing the company’s gigabit fiber
network to its residents. Partners help Google build a less
expensive and less time-consuming network.
Any local cities around here interested in partnering with Google?
-jsq
The VDT should dig deeper into the finances of Lowndes County trash collection.
Nobody has ever seen an accounting of where where the money went for
the county’s former waste collection sites, so nobody knows whether
the county was really losing money or how much, and the county’s
version of how those sites had to be paid for doesn’t match state law..
Sure, Bill Slaughter defending a decision made when Ashley Paulk was chair
is amusing, but instead of transcribing what county officials tell it,
the VDT could find lots more under the county’s garbage with a little digging.
Jason Schaefer write for the VDT Thursday,
Concerns continue over garbage agreement:
Business owner argues case against County
The County is not required under Georgia law to issue RFPs to any
company for waste disposal services, according to Slaughter. That
decision was made in a good-faith effort to find the lowest possible
rate for garbage service for the citizens of Lowndes County, he said
Tuesday.
Is that the point of county government, to act like Wal-Mart?
Is money the only value the county government can name?
Everyone I talked to about the trash issue in 2012 who already
had a waste collection card said they’d be willing to pay more
to keep the sites open.
Maybe if the county had held public hearings they would have learned that.
And does anyone believe ADS’s rates are going to stay that low?
Look at
Wakulla, Florida, where it’s $196/year.
But the bigger question is why did the county privatize trash collection
anyway?
A county half the size of Lowndes has all its Commission
meeting documents online.
Why doesn’t Lowndes?
Is there something the Lowndes County Commission doesn’t want
us to know?
If not, why are they hiding the people’s business from the people?
Contract change orders,
library board bylaws,
applications to volunteer for boards,
board responsibilities,
CPA agreement letters,
invoices
with
itemized expenses,
zoning amendment applications,
deeds,
plats,
cell phone tower applications with maps,
and that
the Effingham County Commission has
all this and more in its
meeting documents online along with its agendas and minutes.
The format is kind of clunky: one big PDF for all the meeting documents.
But it’s also easy for any competent County Clerk to assemble and post.
That way local citizens can get all this information without having
to guess what they need to find out, file an open records request,
wait at least three days (or years), see what excuse the county came up with
for not answering or try to deduce what was left out, etc.
With meeting documents online, you can just go to the web and look.
In Effingham County, with
half the population
of Lowndes County: Continue reading
